Jama Wellness Week 2014

Morgan Armstrong | March 22, 2014

Nestled perfectly between the Oregon Coast, the Cascade Range and just south of the Columbia River Gorge, Portland is in quite nearly a perfect geographic location (as a native I may be bias). I think it’s just natural for an area of such prime real estate to be populated by those that love the outdoors and everything that goes with it.

The people of Jama Nation do a pretty excellent job fitting into the “sporty outdoorsy Pacific Northwesterner” archetype. We’re a pretty active bunch. We have marathoners and cyclocross racers, summer time CrossFit Boot Camps and Barre3 gatherings, we enjoy lunchtime racquetball and host in-office yoga each Monday. One-third of Jamanians cycle to work and not a day goes by that you don’t hear the not-so-gentle whirr of the VitaMix as someone makes their spinach-mango-chia breakfast.

In any given week we have a lot of activity, though this year, at the end of our open enrollment period, we set aside one specific week to celebrate fitness and wellness with all members of Jama Nation.

In addition to our new standard benefit program we added a wellness benefit – a monthly reimbursement to Jamanians that for any activity to keep themselves well: registration fees for a local 5k, a massage, a cooking class, an aerial yoga class or even just a monthly gym membership. Wellness week also included a lunchtime info session with Greenleaf Juicing Co; we have several home-juicers as well as several people that regularly do short juice cleanses, so we wanted to bring in the experts to fill us all in on all the buzz about juicing. In my opinion they were all delicious, except the one that included jalapeño.

We finish our monthly all-hands meeting by having lunch together, so during wellness week we took a page out of the book of our Mediterranean friends and enjoyed hummus, tahini, grilled chicken and falafel with tabouli salad and gluten free pita from Portland favorite Nicholas Restaurant.

Late in the week we celebrated the importance of taking time to relax and keep yourself well, and were treated to acupuncture, Thai massage, foam roller classes and standard massage as well as a delicious spread of healthy snacks from our neighbors as Asula Wellness.

We ended with week with a group walk or run through Waterfront Park. Portland rain is a bit hit-or-miss in February, but luck was on hour side for at least an hour, making the mid-day jaunt in the winter sun that much more enjoyable.